This relates generally to imaging devices, and more particularly, to imaging devices with multiple lenses and multiple image sensors.
Image sensors are commonly used in electronic devices such as cellular telephones, cameras, and computers to capture images. In a typical arrangement, an electronic device is provided with a single image sensor and a single corresponding lens. Some electronic devices use arrays of image sensors and corresponding lenses to gather image data. This type of system, which is sometimes referred to as an array camera, may be used to extend depth of focus, increase output resolution through super-resolution processing, and capture depth information from a scene.
In a conventional array camera, due to a physical offset of the image sensors and corresponding lenses, objects may appear at different positions in images captured by different image sensors. This effect (called parallax) affects objects at different distances from the imaging device differently (i.e., objects near to the imaging device have a larger parallax than objects far from the imaging device). Images of real-world scenes captured by array cameras often contain objects at multiple distances from the array camera. A single parallax correction for all objects in an image is therefore insufficient.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide improved methods for parallax correction and depth mapping for imaging devices with array cameras.